Monday, February 2

All those milk bottles . . .I know! My friend Stacy asked about their fate, landfill or recycled? I'm happy to report Luxembourg has a thorough recycling program. It varies slightly from commune to commune. This is how ours works:

Blue bags: All plastic bottles, cartons, aluminum and steel cans go in here. Blue bags are picked up 2 times a month.

Batteries

Neighborhood Recycling Station: We drop off our paper, cardboard and glass here. Some bottles can be returned to the grocery store. I'm not sure which ones or what you get in return. This station also has a bin for expired batteries. So cool! In Seattle, I collected them in a Tupperware container, but was never really sure where to drop them off. See that orange container? It is for unwanted clothes.

In addition to this, there are a few large recycling centers in town where household items, paints, toxic materials, Styrofoam, construction debris . . . even the kitchen sink can be dropped off.

We also have a yard waste bin that is collected during the spring, summer and into the fall. In Seattle we were able to put our produce scraps into the yard waste bin. I'm not sure if that is the case here.

Okay - I'm both impressed and envious! Trani tries to do recycling but it is frightfully disorganized and more often than not I see garbage in the paper bin and cardboard galore in the garbage. It hasn't really caught on here yet which is a pity considering the disaster that Naples experienced last year with their garbage.

Oh, regarding used batteries -- there is a law (I think it's probably an EU law) which states that any store that sells batteries has to accept old ones and dispose of them properly. Does it actually work? Who knows.

The bag is actually quite big although it doesn't look like it in the picture. Also, if it gets filled up, I just get another one. We have a whole roll of them. Doesn't matter how many you have full - 1, 2, 3 - they'll pick them up.

In Japan most of the rubbish is picked up, it needs to be sorted and put out on the right day. Each city has their own set of rules and when you move to a new place you get a complicated chart of what goes where and which days certain things have to be put out. Some places require special bags for your rubbish, blue for plastic, green for burnable etc. AND you have to put your name on the bag so if you have got it wrong the 'garbage police' can come and hunt you down! Luckily it isn't that strict where we are. We have plastics, PET bottles, styrofoam, milk cartons, batteries, paper/card, burnable (anything that is left). Plus special days for cloth items and garden waste. they are VERY strict on the sizes of the bundles, they have to bundled a certain way and to a certain size or they won't take it.We have a rubbish station, well just a concrete patch where all the rubbish for our block gets put out.

looks very "green" we try here in Australia but no where near as organised as that.. here each house has two big trash cans.. one for trash/food etc and one for recylables.. the garbage truck comes and takes them away